A typical such safety cabinet has at least two pivotal doors and a spring assembly that biases both doors with a force at least when closing. This spring assembly in normal operations, i.e. during manually opening and closing of the doors, is continually under stress and has a catch that only interacts with the doors when closing, for example, in case of fire.
A cabinet, in particular a safety cabinet of this design is seen in EP 2,017,420. Here, two doors hinged with a cabinet body are jointly connected to a slide that can be displaced in a guide. This way, so-called one-handed opening can be done. This means that movement of one of the door is communicated via an element shiftable in a guide to the other door so the other door also experiences a corresponding movement. Overall, the doors are manually opened and closed. The spring assembly comes into play only when closing, as a rule, in case of fire. To this end, the spring assembly is always tensioned during normal operations, i.e. during manual opening and closing of the doors.
Exclusively on closing and most often in case of fire, the tensioned the spring assembly is released and the spring assembly is actuated to ensure an automatic—and not a manual—closing of the doors. For this purpose, the spring assembly is equipped with release means that normally maintains tension in the spring assembly. For closing, for example in case of fire, the release means operates to release the spring assembly and shift the doors (automatically) into the closed position by means of the catch.
The doors can be any kind of pivotal doors with and one-sided hinging to the body of the cabinet in the case of such a cabinet, in which, in principle, folding doors are also conceivable as for example described in DE 200 19 307.
A cabinet that is equipped this way is most often a safety cabinet, a laboratory cabinet, environment cabinet, tool cabinet, wardrobe or the like in which it is important, in particular in case of fire, to protect the objects and substances or materials stored in the cabinet. They can be, for example, hazardous chemicals such as inflammable fluids, etc. In this connection, closing in the event of fire prevents ignition of the fluids or chemicals.
The prior art of EP 2 017 420 has been proven to be effective overall, but is limited in certain respects in its scope of application, because one-handed opening is pursued practically exclusively. Added to that is that the spring assembly engages at the end of the common slide for the two doors, which is not optimal from the perspective of the transmission of force.